


Isannah

by wheel_pen



Series: Miscellaneous Vampire Diaries Stories [6]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, house elf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Salvatore brothers are assisted by a house elf they inherited from a great-uncle when they were still human. Just some random scenes, generally unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Isannah, my original character, is a house elf who has been with the Salvatore brothers since they were human.
> 
> 2\. This story starts at the beginning of the TV show.
> 
> 3\. The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

The letter Zach received had been carefully worded. It was from his nephew, Stefan, asking permission to stay at his uncle’s boarding house in Mystic Falls—nothing unusual there. Except that Stefan wasn’t his nephew, and he didn’t really need to ask permission to stay there, since it was really _his_ house. Zach had received a dozen or more similar letters over the years, starting in the mid-1990’s when he’d taken stewardship of the boarding house from his parents. In the first ones Stefan had referred to Zach as his ‘cousin,’ which was more plausible at the time; but since Stefan hadn’t aged a day since then, Zach was now more credibly his ‘uncle.’ In private, though, Zach preferred to call _him_ uncle, a title he’d learned in childhood. Odd as the changing forms of address seemed, they were actually the _least_ odd thing about Stefan.

He arrived one evening after dark, not bothering to knock but rather walking right into the unlocked house, as comfortably as if he did so every night. “Zach,” he greeted, when the other man came around the corner. “How have you been?”

“Uncle Stefan,” Zach replied, reaching out to shake the offered hand. It was mildly cool to the touch, like he’d been outside on a chilly night.

“You look tired,” Stefan observed, not tactlessly but rather with genuine concern. “Are you well? Is anything wrong?”

It wasn’t really that Zach disliked Stefan. Stefan was in fact difficult to dislike; he was a good person, kind, compassionate, thoughtful. But the wariness Zach had learned over the years rested heavily on his shoulders, and he saw Stefan’s visits more as something to be endured than enjoyed. “I had to cancel some reservations, when I heard you were coming,” Zach explained instead. This was after all a working boarding house. “People were coming to town to see the comet.”

“Ah. Well, I’m sure they’ll find someplace else to stay,” Stefan suggested easily. It was a given that there would be no strangers in his house when he stayed there; he considered it his sanctuary, his place of relaxation away from the world, and only wanted family around. “Did you ever get that roof leak fixed?” he inquired politely, glancing around the cavernous living room.

“Yes, I did,” Zach assured him. “Your letter said—“

There was a thump from the entryway and they both looked back around the corner to see a petite blond enter the house carrying two large suitcases. “Need any help, Isannah?” Stefan asked, expecting the answer to be ‘no.’

“No, I’ve got it, thanks!” she said cheerfully, closing the door behind her.

“Do you remember Isannah?” Stefan asked Zach curiously. “She’s my housekeeper. She’ll take care of the house while I’m here.”

“Hi, Zach!” Isannah greeted, giving him a hug that he felt he couldn’t decline. “My goodness, you’ve grown so much, I wouldn’t have recognized you! You were just a tiny thing the last time I saw you.” Isannah looked barely older than Stefan, maybe early 20’s, so her comment was even more disconcerting to Zach. “Well, I’ll just put these upstairs, then I’ll go check on the kitchen,” she announced, determination in her tone.

“Do you remember her?” Stefan repeated, once Isannah had gone upstairs.

“From when I was a child,” Zach admitted. Normally Stefan didn’t bring her along as his visits only last a week or so; but this time—“Your letter said you wanted to stay ‘for a while,’” he finally mentioned. “Go to school?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Stefan agreed. He headed for the elegant sideboard with its crystal decanter. “Would you like a drink?” he offered politely, polite if you ignored the fact that he was helping himself to Zach’s whiskey. Zach did ignore it; he had long ago ceased thinking of most of the house’s possessions as his own.

“No, thank you,” he replied, and Stefan poured one for himself. “But you can’t—go to school,” he tried to explain, thinking this should be obvious. “You can’t—interact with people.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do, Zach,” Stefan informed him, sipping the whiskey. His gaze drifted off slightly, as though he were thinking of something else for a moment. “Do you know the Gilbert family?” he asked.

Zach’s mind raced—not as to whether he knew them, but about how they fit in with whatever Stefan had planned. “The husband and wife were killed in a car accident last May,” he finally answered. Stefan watched him patiently; he already knew that. “There’s a son and daughter—teenagers, I think. An aunt moved back to town to look after them. I don’t know them well.”

Stefan nodded as though this had been marginally helpful. “I’ve thought of a cover story,” he revealed easily, too easily for Zach’s liking. “Military family, deceased parents, born in Mystic Falls but left as a child. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of all the paperwork. I just need you to maintain the story if anyone asks.” He set his empty glass down on the tray and started for the stairs.

Zach cut him off. “Uncle Stefan—You can’t just pretend to be—a normal teenager. Someone’s going to find out. Someone’s going to get hurt.”

Stefan put his hand on the other man’s arm, and Zach tried not to flinch. “Zach, I promise, I’m not going to hurt anyone,” he said, and Zach could see he was being sincere; the vervain Zach poured in his coffee every day ensured that Stefan couldn’t just compel him to go along with him. “I only feed from animals now. You don’t have any pets, do you?” he asked with suddenly seriousness. “That was a joke,” he added, when Zach froze. “Relax, Zach, it will be fine. It’s not like you actually have to raise a teenager.” With that Stefan stepped away from him, carefully detaching himself so as not to hurt the fragile human, and headed upstairs to the room Zach kept preserved for him, a monument to all the memories Stefan had that went well beyond Zach’s lifetime.

This was not what Zach had in mind, no, not at all. A few days, maybe a week—that was the usual timeframe, and Stefan would walk around town after dark when he was less likely to be seen and remembered, just keeping up with the changes, not making any himself. Zach tried to picture him going to classes at the high school, doing homework, hanging out with the kids in the pavilion by the lake—it was comical, and yet horrifying at the same time, knowing that Stefan could walk among the unsuspecting humans so easily. They would be completely unaware of how easily he could turn and kill them—and how much he might enjoy doing so, no matter how kind and compassionate he seemed. And how did the Gilberts fit into all this? Zach made a mental note to visit the town archives—tomorrow, if possible—and look into their history.

“What can I—oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Isannah apologized, when Zach nearly leapt out of his skin. “I just wanted to know what you liked for breakfast, and when I should make it.”

“Um, I can make my own breakfast, thanks,” Zach assured her.

She looked slightly disappointed. “Oh, it’s no trouble. I like to cook, and I don’t usually have anyone to do it for.”

“No, really, it’s okay.” He wasn’t trying to be rude; he just didn’t want to get too comfortable around these… people.

“Oh. Well, Stefan likes to have coffee, especially in the morning,” Isannah went on. She began to straighten the couch pillows she deemed unacceptably crooked. “Do you mind if I use the coffee maker in the kitchen?”

“No, feel free,” Zach allowed, surprised she bothered to ask.

“Okay. Thanks. And don’t worry,” she added, turning back to the kitchen, “I’ll have this whole house clean before you know it!”

Suddenly Zach wasn’t sure which one of them was more threatening.

 

As promised, Isannah was making coffee the next morning when Zach got up. “Where’s Stefan?” he asked, unable to keep the suspicion from his tone.

Isannah didn’t seem to notice it. “He went out to the woods to find some breakfast,” she answered easily. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, thanks,” Zach answered. He poured himself a cup of coffee, added some creamer, then pulled a small bottle from the nearest drawer and added two drops of pale, greenish liquid to his drink. He didn’t make a big deal about it, but he also didn’t try to hide it, and if Isannah saw anything she didn’t comment.

The small blond was vigorously scrubbing at the old wash-sink, a holdover from an earlier era that Zach hadn’t used in years. It looked good for the guests, though. “What are your plans for the day?” Isannah asked with interest, attacking the rust stains brutally.

“Well, I thought maybe I’d try to repair the grape arbor,” Zach decided. As long as there weren’t paying customers to attend to, he might as well catch up on maintenance. “The wooden slats have rotted through—“

“Oh, I can take care of that,” Isannah dismissed. “If you’d be available to drive me to the store to get some supplies, that is. I hate to impose, but Stefan doesn’t want me to use much magic, so I’m going to need some chemicals and hardware.”

“Uh, sure,” Zach agreed dubiously. “Sorry, what are you again? A fairy?” No stranger than a vampire, he supposed.

“No, I’m a house elf,” Isannah corrected without offense. She made a ridiculous little growl of frustration and threw down her scouring pad. Then she glanced back at the outside door. “Well, maybe a _little_ magic would be—“

As if on cue Stefan breezed in from the backyard, his hair slightly windblown, and Isannah retreated guiltily from the sink. “Good morning,” he told Zach cheerfully.

“Good morning,” Zach replied, sipping his coffee determinedly.

Isannah rushed across the kitchen to pour Stefan his own cup, even though he was standing right by the machine. “Did you have a nice breakfast, Stefan? Did you—oh, you’ve torn your sweatshirt!” she fussed.

He took the coffee from her and looked down at the small rip without interest. “Oh. Yeah, I must’ve torn it while I was chasing the—are there _badgers_ around here now?” he asked Zach. “I don’t remember them being here. Sorry,” he added to Isannah, sitting down at the table across from Zach.

“Well, I can sew it up,” she decided and left the room.

“She likes to fix things, around the house,” Stefan informed Zach, somewhat unnecessarily. “She can be a little…” He searched for the right word. “…zealous sometimes. I’ve told her not to use so much magic,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s better to move away from it sometimes. You don’t mind taking her to the store occasionally, while I’m at school?” Zach could hardly say no, with the look Stefan gave him.

Isannah hurried back into the room clutching a small sewing kit. “Good thing I found this last night when I was digging around!” she announced cheerfully, threading the needle on the first attempt. She reached for Stefan’s arm as though she were going to repair the damage while he was still wearing it.

“Isannah,” he told her mildly, though there was steel in the tone. “It doesn’t have to be right this second.”

She was not pleased to leave something so obviously wrong, but she backed off. “Well, at least it wasn’t a new one,” she decided. “I’ve got all your new school clothes washed and I’m going to iron them today,” she went on, sounding excited by this prospect. “What should I lay out for you tomorrow, for your first day of school? Do you want a suit?”

Stefan smiled fondly. “No, it’s very casual now,” he reminded her. “I’ll pick something out myself.” Her eyes narrowed. “And nothing really needs to be ironed.”

Isannah ignored that part and went back to scrubbing the old sink. “We went on a big shopping spree in New York for his back-to-school wardrobe!” she enthused to Zach.

“Yes, that was…” Long pause. “Fun,” Stefan finished, humoring her. “Did you get something to eat?” he asked her more seriously.

“Yes, I found some big, fat crickets in the basement,” Isannah assured him with satisfaction, and Zach froze, panic momentarily setting in at the thought of her rooting around in the basement. Stefan gave him a look he couldn’t interpret, but before either of them could speak Isannah chattered on. “Oh, I almost forgot, I have to buy your school supplies today!” Stefan barely refrained from sighing. “Maybe they’ll have a list at the store. Do you know what classes you’re taking? I’ll label all your folders and notebooks and binders for you.”

“No, I have to wait until I get to school tomorrow,” Stefan explained. “But once I have my schedule, I promise you can label everything.” This seemed to please her. “Could you go clean in my room for a while?” he requested. “It could use a good airing-out.”

“I bet it could!” Isannah agreed. “Okay, I’ll go take care of that right now!”

“She can be kind of exhausting,” Stefan noted, as soon as she’d gone. “She’ll settle down soon.”

Zach nodded mutely, chugging his coffee and trying to think of a plausible excuse to leave the table. “Well—“

“Isannah found the plants last night,” Stefan said, and escape evaporated. “How long have you been growing vervain?”

Zach looked up when he realized Stefan wasn’t scolding, merely curious. “Years,” he admitted. “It’s been passed down through the family—one of the precautions you take when you’re related to vampires.” Stefan’s eyebrows raised slightly. “You’ve always treated us well, Uncle Stefan,” Zach went on, feeling slightly bolder. “But there are others…”

They both knew who he meant and Stefan sighed. “Has he been around lately?”

“Not for about… seven years,” Zach replied. Those visits were usually much worse than Stefan’s, but also usually less frequent. “He’d kill me if he knew I was growing it.”

“Well _I_ won’t tell him,” Stefan promised dryly. He drained the rest of his coffee and stood. “I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going to look around town, maybe go to the archives.” Fortunately Stefan’s back was to Zach as he said this, so he couldn’t see the other man’s disappointed expression as his own archive-digging plans were postponed. “If you have time,” Stefan added from the doorway, “Isannah would appreciate the ride to the store. But don’t worry about it if you’re busy.” Zach decided he wasn’t too busy at all.

 

*****

 

There was a thump from the house and Damon looked up from Stefan’s prone figure in the driveway. “Oh, looks like we woke Zach up,” he noted sarcastically, sauntering away. “Sorry, Zach!”

“Damon Molinari Salvatore!” a stern voice proclaimed, and Damon whipped around to see Isannah in the doorway, her hands on her hips.

For an instant a genuine smile lit up his face, though Stefan was not able to appreciate it much as he picked himself stiffly off the ground. Damon swooped over to the blond and scooped her up, spinning her around until she squealed. “Sunny!” he greeted, putting her back on her feet. “Did he drag you back to this drafty old castle? You’ll have plenty to clean, anyway.”

Isannah refused to be swayed by his charm, however. “Did you break that window?” she asked him severely.

“I did not,” Damon claimed, the picture of innocence. “It was entirely Stefan’s fault.”

She couldn’t really do much if the owners of the house insisted on breaking it. “Well, is anyone hurt?” she checked instead.

“Fine,” Stefan assured her, glaring at Damon.

“Right as rain,” Damon answered chipperly. He turned to Isannah with a mock-serious look. “Have you cleaned my room yet? I want my room cleaned.”

“Are you staying for a while?” she asked hopefully. She liked to see the family together.

“No,” Stefan answered for him.

“Yes,” Damon countered, pointedly ignoring his brother. “I might have some dry-cleaning for you, too.”

“Oh, that’s fine, just bring it over anytime,” Isannah encouraged, and Stefan barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

Damon smirked at him over her head. “I’ll do that,” he promised. Then he kissed her cheek. “TTFN. That’s ‘ta-ta for now,’ with ‘ta-ta’ being slang for ‘good-bye’ and not, well, you know.”

“No,” Isannah said blankly, shaking her head.

Damon decided this concept was too complex to explain further. “Mmm. Okay. Like the scruffy look,” he added to Zach as he walked away, letting the human know he hadn’t overlooked him lurking in the shadows by the door. A moment later Damon disappeared into the darkness.

Still shaking off a few healing injuries Stefan stared after him, mind racing at this new and thoroughly unpleasant development. Zach hurried out to the driveway to meet him. “What is he doing here?” he hissed, trying to keep his panic under control.

“The usual,” Stefan spat bitterly. “Trying to make my life miserable.”

“He’s killed two people already,” Zach reminded him.

“I know,” Stefan agreed with a sigh. It seemed arrogant to say that those people had died just to upset him; but since Damon was the one who had killed them—they kind of _had_. And that left Stefan feeling more helpless than ever.

Isannah intruded into their huddle. “Can I use magic to fix the window?” she asked in a hushed voice that mimicked their own.

“Yes, go ahead,” Stefan allowed and she scampered off.

“If he’s just following you, maybe you should go,” Zach suggested boldly. “Go to a big city, see if he follows, gets distracted…”

“It’s not that simple,” Stefan told him flatly. “Besides, there’s something else—“

“That Gilbert girl?” The way Stefan turned on him almost made Zach regret saying anything. But something had to be said. “What’s so special about her?”

“Could you move, please?” Isannah called down from the broken wall in Stefan’s room.

Stefan and Zach moved closer to the house and watched in silence as glass and wood shards flew up from the pavement, reforming Stefan’s window—it was like watching a film of it breaking in reverse. Zach was amazed; Stefan had seen it before. “Don’t worry about her,” Stefan told Zach, and it took him a moment to remember who they’d been talking about. “I’ll keep an eye on Damon. I’ll find out what he’s up to.” Somehow Zach didn’t find this very comforting.

 

*****

 

Stefan was idling with the grocery cart in an aisle when he detected a familiar and welcome presence nearby. Maybe he’d caught a fragment of her voice as she spoke to herself, or heard the click of her shoes on the tile floor, or smelled the scent of her shampoo and lotion and underlying warmth. Whatever it was, he knew she was about to walk around the corner and found himself tense with anticipation, ridiculous though that was at his age.

Then she _did_ walk past, and he almost forgot to _do_ anything about it. She was beautiful, delicate, almost like an old-fashioned china doll, but he could sense the underlying steel—she would not break under pressure, she had proven that already. It was not a cold steel, however, unlike the woman whose face she inexplicably shared—there was no constant hint of mockery in her smile, no glint of cunning in her eyes.

She’d almost crossed the end of the aisle, oblivious to his presence, when he remembered to call out. “Elena.”

She stopped suddenly and turned, a smile lighting her face as she recognized him. “Stefan. What are you doing here?” She caught herself immediately. “Well, I guess that’s obvious,” she laughed sheepishly. She rocked back on her heels, her body language wanting to be closer to him but her conscious mind no doubt cautioning her against coming on too strong.

“Yeah, I was just doing a little shopping for my uncle,” he replied with a smile. Honestly he would be content to merely stare at her for a while, but that tended to be frowned upon these days, at least among people who had only just met, so he scrambled to come up with something else to say. “Um, you like mustard.” Wow, insightful.

Elena stared at him blankly for a second, then remembered she was holding a very large bottle of mustard. “Oh, yeah, well, my brother and aunt are real mustard freaks,” she joked. “I’m more of a ketchup girl, personally.” She, too, seemed eager to come up with ways to prolong the conversation, inane though it might be. “How about you? What’s your favorite condiment?”

“Mayonnaise mixed with Tabasco sauce,” Stefan answered after a moment’s thought. He’d heard that once in a movie and thought it sounded like an interesting response. “I know, it sounds really gross,” he admitted as her eyebrows went up, “but it’s good.”

“I’ll have to try that sometime,” she promised. Reluctance shown on her face. “Well, I should get back to my aunt, she’s waiting for the—“

There was a sudden gasp from further down the aisle and Stefan looked up to see Isannah standing there, staring at them in alarm. Her arms were full of vinegar bottles and they began to slip—Stefan used only a _little_ bit of unnatural speed to get to her side and catch them. “It’s only Elena, I explained this to you,” he reminded her in a soft voice. He could understand her reluctance, though; she and Katherine had not gotten along, to put it mildly. But that was why he’d _prepared_ her, so she wouldn’t be awkward around Elena.

“Have you met my housekeeper?” Stefan asked quickly of Elena, who was watching them with concern. Isannah trailed him back to the cart, where they deposited the vinegar. “This is Isannah. Isannah, this is Elena.”

The blond stuck out her hand gamely. “Hello, Elena. Stefan’s told me _so_ much about you.”

“Really?” Elena responded with pleased surprise, taking her hand. Stefan did not have to fake his slight embarrassment at these words.

“Oh yes, he’s been terribly excited—“

“Um, hmm, you know, the ice cream’s starting to melt, so—“ Stefan interrupted a bit obviously, giving Isannah a _look_.

Elena seemed to appreciate knowing he’d talked about her, though. “Yeah, I should go,” she agreed. “It was nice to see you again, Stefan,” she told him. “And nice to meet you, Isannah.” With that she turned and left.

As soon as she was out of view Stefan turned on Isannah. “What?” she asked innocently. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to play it cool.”

“I’m _trying_ not to look like an obsessed stalker,” he pointed out. She made a face and started to push the cart to the next aisle, tactfully avoiding the phrase, ‘even if you _are_ one.’

 

*****

 

“Here, let me hold that for you,” Elena offered, taking some of the notebooks from Stefan’s arms. It wasn’t _really_ too much for him to carry, of course, but apparently he’d overestimated the amount that _looked_ right.

“Thanks, I’ll just be a sec,” he assured her, quickly rearranging the books in his locker. They were almost comically narrow, a reminder of how many more students were squeezed into schools these days, and he couldn’t get both arms in at a time to shuffle his textbooks.

“Is this your handwriting?” Elena asked, a bit dubiously, staring at the feminine calligraphy labeling each of his notebooks.

Stefan smirked a little. “Uh, no. _Inside_ is my handwriting.” Elena flipped open the cover to gaze at the equally neat but simpler handwriting covering the pages. He did kind of miss the beauty and elegance of the handwriting form he’d originally been taught, but these days it stood out as pretentious and unnecessary. “Isannah—the housekeeper—she labeled all my notebooks for me. She was really excited about my first day of school here.”

Elena smiled faintly. “She seems nice,” she noted. “She doesn’t seem very old, to have worked for your family that long.”

“She’s older than she looks,” Stefan claimed. “All that energy keeps her young.”

Fortunately Elena was distracted from this subject by something else. “Your notes—“ she began, frowning at them. “It’s like—are you transcribing every word the teacher says?” She flipped through a couple of pages, perhaps intrusively.

“Oh, well, it’s something I do when I start to get bored,” Stefan insisted, gently taking the notebooks back from her. “Helps me stay focused.” Actually it was fairly automatic and allowed him to answer Mr. Tanner’s combative questions without taking much time away from staring at Elena. Somehow he didn’t think that was an appropriate response to give, though.

 

*****

 

Damon stood in the doorway of the great room, staring at the young woman inside in surprise. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Isannah looked up from her labors with an annoyed expression. “I’m trying to keep this place clean,” she grunted, resuming her efforts to shove a large wooden table aside.

Damon crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorway, obviously with no intention of helping her. “Can’t you just twitch your nose and get it all done?”

Isannah rolled her eyes. “I wish they’d never made _Bewitched_ ,” she muttered under her breath.

“Seriously, what’s this whole ‘living as a human’ thing about?” he went on to ask, hopping easily down the stairs into the large room. “Humans are weak, fragile, shallow creatures.”

“Good thing _you’re_ not shallow,” Isannah shot back. She gave the table a frustrated shove and her hand slipped, scraping her arm on the table’s edge. She hissed in pain and pulled her arm back to look at the scratch. Giving in with a smug smirk, Damon lifted the large table easily and set it aside. “I just wanted to see you flex your muscles,” she told him, and his grin widened.

“You’d better put something on that before it gets infected,” he suggested, indicating her injury.

“It’s nothing,” she dismissed, sweeping the wooden floor where the table had stood.

Damon wandered idly around the room, picking up knickknacks and setting them down in the wrong places. “Kind of a big house for just the three of you, isn’t it?” he commented.

“You aren’t staying here?” she realized, looking up.

He turned to her in surprise. “Is that _disappointment_ I hear?” he asked, unable to keep the hint of amusement out of his tone.

Isannah shrugged and went back to her work. “I like everyone to be together, that’s all,” she said. “Although I could do without all the snide remarks and arguments,” she added.

“Better I have my own place, then,” Damon assured her. “You should come over sometime, I’m sure it could use a good cleaning.” Isannah gave him a look as she carefully picked up a dustpan of debris and dropped it into a garbage can. “Come on,” he said more seriously, “what good is a house elf without her powers?”

Isannah avoided looking at him. “Stefan’s trying to move away from magic—“

“Oh, G-d,” Damon groaned dramatically. “Save me from Stefan and his no-magic diets! Remember the last time he went through this phase? He had you climbing on ladders, scrubbing the windows.”

“Yes, well, at least we have electricity now,” Isannah commented, trying to be positive. She started to push a couch aside and Damon flopped down on it, rendering it immobile.

“His house, his rules, I guess,” he shrugged flippantly.

“That’s right.”

“My house has a lot fewer rules,” he tempted, kneeling on the couch as she went to a different part of the room to clean. “Hardly any at all, in fact. You can use all the magic you want to clean it.”

“Thanks,” Isannah replied dryly, beginning to dust the mantle.

“Only don’t tell Stefan where it is,” Damon warned. “I don’t want him popping in and rifling through my stuff.”

“I really wish I hadn’t been left to _both_ of you,” Isannah sighed.

Damon appeared beside her almost instantly, but she wasn’t impressed with his parlor tricks. “You know, as the elder, you really should have gone to me,” he reminded her in a low voice. “What do you say, you come over to _my_ place, and I’ll get you… a Roomba?”

“You tempt me strangely,” she admitted with a smirk. “After I finish here.”

Damon was clearly disappointed with this answer, but he knew he wasn’t going to get a different one. Obligingly he shoved the couch aside so Isannah could sweep under it and a small grey mouse froze in the sudden exposure. Isannah gasped, then scooped the mouse up with her hands and dropped it, wriggling, into her mouth. Damon’s looked was decidedly unenthusiastic.

“What?” she asked, slurping up the tail. “You eat people.”

He had to admit that was a good point. “You’ve got a little—“ He indicated the side of her mouth and she wiped off some stray mouse fur before going back to her duties.

“So what about this whole Elena thing?” Damon asked her as she worked. “Doesn’t seem like a good idea, does it?”

Isannah’s expression indicated she agreed. “No one asks for _my_ opinion,” she shrugged, sweeping.

“I do,” Damon protested, and she laughed.

“Only when it agrees with yours,” she pointed out. “Anyway, good idea or not, how could we _not_ come back here?” she asked sensibly. “No one ever sees the clone of their long-lost love and says, ‘Eh, I’m just gonna ignore that.’”

“Well maybe they should,” Damon replied darkly.

“Of course they _should_ , but no one _does_ ,” she persisted. “You _should_ just leave him alone, too, but you never _do_ ,” she went on, referring to his brother. “Some people just thrive on drama.”

“Some people talk too much,” he shot back irritably. “Make me a casserole tonight,” he added coolly. “Caroline’s coming over and I promised to feed her this time.”

Isannah quirked an eyebrow. “Speaking of _drama_.”

“ _Vegan_ ,” he told her with a sneer.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Fine. I’ll go to the store,” she announced, setting down her broom. “I _like_ vegan cooking. It’s challenging.”

“Whatever,” he replied, no longer finding the conversation amusing. “Bring it over to my place around 6:30.”

“Okay.”

 

*****

 

Elena opened her front door and froze in surprised alarm when she saw Damon standing there. She hadn’t had good experiences with the man and was suspicious of how he treated her good friend, Caroline, so his unexpected appearance didn’t bode well.

Then she noticed he was holding a tray of cupcakes. Pink-frosted cupcakes with little sparkly sprinkles on them. And that kind of killed any menace he might want to project. The long-suffering expression on his face said he knew it, too.

“Hello,” Elena said cautiously.

“I’ve brought cupcakes,” he pointed out unnecessarily, unable to keep the sheepishness out of his tone.

Stefan appeared at Elena’s side almost too quickly to be normal. “What are you—“ he began suspiciously, then he too saw what his brother was carrying. “Cupcakes?”

“Cupcakes,” Elena nodded.

“Cupcakes,” Damon agreed, trying to put a positive spin on the situation.

“Thanks for helping carry stuff,” Caroline said sarcastically, coming up behind Damon carrying a large crock pot.

“Yes, thanks for helping,” Isannah echoed, but much more sincerely, approaching with her arms laden with food containers. “Hello again, Elena! Stefan told me what happened to your big meal. I hope you don’t mind me bringing over a few things.”

“No, of course not,” Elena assured her. She quite liked the young woman who seemed to take care of _both_ the Salvatore brothers and was grateful for her efforts. She stepped aside to let the food-bearing visitors in.

“You could have left some of it at home,” Stefan said pointedly, staring right at his brother. The other man smirked as he sailed past but couldn’t get too cocky while still carrying pink cupcakes.


	2. Chapter 2

Stefan did not charge into things without thinking them through; he had a plan. He’d drugged Damon’s favorite Scotch, knowing he would likely be caught at it. Then he’d drugged Caroline’s champagne, knowing Damon’s guard would now be lowered _and_ that he was likely to bite the girl at some point in the evening. He felt bad using Caroline, but he reasoned that his actions would break Damon’s hold on her, and that was a good thing. His plan did not so far include what he was going to tell Elena about all this, though he was beginning work on a story about Damon’s tragic history of substance abuse that he could pull out if pressed.

Another thing his plan included: how to keep a distraught house elf from interfering when he dragged Damon in through the back door, drugged and dazed. “Oh! What happened?” Isannah asked in alarm, jumping up from the kitchen table.

“Sunny,” Damon coughed, his hand reaching out pleadingly.

“Is he hurt? I’ll get some—“ Zach stood resolutely in front of the refrigerator where they stored some emergency blood, blocking her path. “What’s going on?” she demanded, turning slowly back around.

“Help me,” Damon begged distinctly.

“Get the door,” Stefan told Zach. “Isannah, I forbid you to interfere—“

“No!” she exclaimed, guessing with horror what he was planning.

“This is none of your business, and you will not try to help Damon in any way,” Stefan continued, even as he shuffled his brother towards the basement door. “This does not concern you.”

“No, Stefan, please don’t!” Isannah implored, starting to cry. His words, pedestrian though they might seem, had rooted in her place in the kitchen, unable to assist Damon. “Let me talk to him. We can fix—“

“I forbid you to interfere,” Stefan called back once again for good measure, over Damon’s pathetic groan.

“No no NO!” Isannah shrieked. As they threw Damon into one of the cells in the basement and locked the door behind him he and Zach could still hear her shouting, followed by the sound of glass shattering and metal pots hitting the stone floor. When they returned, with some trepidation, to the kitchen a few minutes later, it was a disaster. And Isannah was nowhere to be seen.

This part worried Zach the most. “Where did she go?” he wanted to know.

“Probably the attic,” Stefan sighed, righting some overturned furniture. “You might hear a lot of noise up there, and she’ll probably leave messes around the house to show her displeasure.”

“Great, now it’s _Poltergeist_ ,” Zach muttered, grabbing a broom to sweep up the broken dishes.

Stefan smiled thinly. “I wouldn’t go up there for a week or so, until Damon’s desiccated completely and I’ve moved him to the family crypt. She’ll calm down then.” He tried to sound more confident about it than he actually felt.

Zach sensed this. “Are you sure this will work, Uncle Stefan?” he pressed soberly. In a sense it was too late for such questions; Damon would kill them both if he could escape from this, Zach was certain of it.

“It’ll work,” Stefan reassured him. “No one knows he’s down there; no one’s going to help him. Isannah can’t, I won’t, and he can’t compel you,” he listed. “And I’ve got his ring so he can’t go out in daylight, even if he got away.”

“He could still do plenty of damage after dark,” Zach muttered, picking up some pots and pans from the floor.

“Just—ignore him,” Stefan advised. “He’ll try to play mind games with you. Don’t talk to him at all.”

“Right, don’t go into the basement, and don’t go into the attic,” Zach summarized darkly. “Good thing it’s a big house.”

 

Zach thought he was going to go crazy. In the basement, Damon coughed and groaned like a man dying of TB in a Dickens novel. In the attic, Isannah wailed and thumped on things like a storm knocking tree branches against the house.

Later he decided the combined aural assault really must have affected his mind, because why else would he have thought going down to the basement to say good-bye to Damon was a good idea? There was no sentimental connection there, no hope that things could’ve been different, because they were _never_ different, Zach had never known anything but the monster. As if to prove this Damon had tried to strangle him and only Stefan’s swift reappearance had saved him.

“Are you okay?” Stefan asked him, once they were safely back in the kitchen. Zach coughed experimentally and winced at the soreness in his throat, but nodded. “I’ll make you some tea,” Stefan offered.

He headed towards the microwave with a mug of water, but Zach stopped him with a noise. “Cord,” he said in a raspy voice, then cleared his throat again.

Stefan reached around behind the microwave and pulled out the electrical cord, which had been deliberately frayed—nibbled, really—near the plug. Well, at least Isannah had also unplugged it, so it wasn’t a fire hazard; she’d done the same with the coffee maker that morning.

“Okay, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way,” Stefan decided, with more than a trace of irony; the ‘old-fashioned way’ still involved an electric stove, which did not seem very old-fashioned to him at all. He put a kettle of water on to boil and sat down at the table across from Zach, knowing he didn’t have to remind the other man how stupid it had been to go to the basement—he’d seen that for himself.

A few minutes later when he was sipping his tea Zach felt more like conversation. “How was school?” he asked, a ridiculously normal question given the circumstances.

Stefan shrugged a little, pensive. “Elena has a difficult time trusting me,” he admitted. “I’ve made her too suspicious.”

Zach nodded in understanding. “You’re not a very good liar,” he observed, and Stefan smirked in spite of himself.

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” he decided ruefully.

Zach didn’t smile along, though. “Being a good liar is important when you’ve got something to hide.” Stefan sighed, tired of this topic. “There are people in town who know the history, who don’t think it’s just superstition,” Zach insisted. “People who could be dangerous to you if they knew—“

“Or to you?” Stefan interrupted levelly. “You really don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, Zach. We can find someone else to maintain the place.” Here Zach fell silent. He didn’t really know why he stayed; maybe it was because for the most part he enjoyed his life, the town, running the boarding house without worrying about making a profit—but then times like these happened, and he wondered why he’d agreed to come back here after college.

“Just a few more days, do you think?” he finally said instead, indicating both of the upset supernatural beings in the house.

“I think so,” Stefan agreed. “He’s shutting down. And then Isannah will go back to normal, and clean up the mess she’s made.”

“The milk was sour this morning,” Zach noted.

“Yes, that’s a classic one.”

“And she left some kind of half-eaten mouse in the breadbox,” he added, grimacing at the memory. “At least, I hope _she_ left it.”

“Minor annoyances,” Stefan tried to tell him, with a dry smile. “Nothing dangerous.” Suddenly he seemed to think of something and pulled out his cell phone. “What time does your watch say?” Zach showed him; it matched Stefan’s wristwatch and the clock on the wall—but not his cell phone time. “S—t,” Stefan swore unexpectedly, jumping up from the table. “She changed all the clocks she could get to. I’m late meeting Elena, and I wanted to eat something first—“ He paused halfway out the door and gave Zach a sober look. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Zach assured him, raising his mug of tea as if to say that was all he needed.

“Good. I’m not sure when I’ll be back,” Stefan called over his shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Need anything? Only an exorcist, Zach decided, listening to Isannah above and Damon below.

 

Damon was calling out for help.

He was her master, and she loved him, from when he was a human child, lonely and angry and grief-stricken.

He was trapped within the house, within _her_ domain, alone and in pain once again.

But she couldn’t do anything about it. She was physically unable to interfere: her other master had forbidden it. Humans had a saying about the foolishness of trying to serve two masters; now she understood its cruelty as well.

So she did the only thing she _could_ do to express her fury and frustration—neglect her household duties, make things unpleasant for the occupants of the house instead of helping them. Her methods were perhaps petty, but she gave in to the grim satisfaction she felt whenever she unnerved or inconvenienced them; Stefan tried to handle it stoically but she could see that Zach was disturbed by her tricks. _He_ had been the one to grow the poison plant, after all, so she thought this only fitting.

Damon was calling out for help, now to the human girl he’d been intimate with, Caroline—not because he cared about her, but because the shred of connection between them might be enough to draw her in, to be useful to him once more. Isannah didn’t think Stefan could hear this psychic message and of course she didn’t mention it to him; she wasn’t supposed to interfere.

It wasn’t interfering to leave several of the house doors unlocked; that was merely neglecting her duties to care for the house, which she had already resolved to do. Should someone unwanted enter, that was merely a further consequence.

Zach was a problem, though. He would stop the girl when she came.

Unless there was something Isannah could do without _really_ doing anything.

 

The crash from the attic was particularly loud and uncontrolled, making Zach jump. The house had been so still today—Damon had finally lost his energy even to moan, and Isannah had been quiet, too. The crash made him nervous, especially since Stefan was away at that school carwash.

He was about to go back to his book when he heard the next noise. “Zach! Zach?” Over and over again, in pitiful tones, his name was repeated.

She’d never done that before, and he set his book aside, listening harder. He was not some foolish optimist, to go plunging up the attic stairs into who knew what, especially after the encounter with Damon. Isannah’s anger had not yet ebbed—Stefan had almost been late to the fundraiser today because he and Zach had been righting all the furniture she’d overturned in the night. She’d even turned all the paintings and books upside down, which was an unexpectedly unsettling sight.

“Zach! Zach!”

He got up and went to the foot of the stairs that led to the attic. There was a lot of old furniture stored up there, heavy items that only a vampire could’ve gotten up those stairs (or so he’d felt when he tried to bring an antique writing desk down last summer). Isannah was so small—he could easily imagine her trapped underneath a collapsed chair, snarled in an old rope, injured from tripping over a heavy armoire.

“Isannah?” he called up the stairs. There was no answer now, which worried him more. Tentatively, he took a few steps up, telling himself this was foolish, that if he was truly concerned he should call Stefan, let him deal with his own magical kind.

“Zaaaaaaaaaach…” Her voice was low, plaintive, and he took another few steps. Isannah wasn’t dangerous to him like Damon; Stefan hadn’t _locked_ her in the attic (though after the dead mouse incident Zach almost wished he had). Once this situation with Damon was past she would go back to taking care of the house again, for quite some time if Stefan planned to keep up this high school ploy; Zach didn’t want there to be animosity between the two of them, because he had ignored her when she needed help.

He found himself at the top of the stairs and opened the attic door slowly. It was dim and shadowy as the late afternoon sun slanted in through the small windows. He hadn’t been up here in a while and it was hard to tell what, if anything, was amiss, though it didn’t look like she’d been damaging anything. “Isannah?” There was no answer.

Slowly he threaded through the sheet-draped furniture, picking out the careful path that was nonetheless strewn with box corners and tool points. It was silent, dead silent, except for his own breathing and the creak of the floorboards.

Something moved in a far corner, half-hidden by shadow, and Zach’s feet froze in place, even as his heart sped up. “Isannah?” he asked, his voice hoarse with the dust that floated around him.

The creature in the corner moved again, its silhouette large and misshapen to Zach’s eye—crouched, hunched over, tangled strands of hair dangling from its head. Isannah was a pretty, delicate thing who kept herself meticulously neat; this creature seemed more like some ugly, malevolent spirit who frightened and punished the negligent and the disrespectful.

“Zach,” she said again, her voice recognizable but rough, scratchy.

“Isannah? Are you okay?” he asked hesitantly. He was _definitely_ calling Stefan—as soon as he got safely back downstairs.

“Yes,” she replied slowly. “Are you?”

He didn’t know quite how to respond to that. “I think I’ll just go—“

There was a thump from downstairs, from the main part of the house, and in a flash Zach realized it could mean nothing good. He turned and raced for the door, Isannah’s blood-curdling cackle in his ears as he tripped over something before finally reaching the stairs.

 

Minutes later, Damon sat on the floor in the front hallway, his skin pale and papery except where the sunlight had burned it. Caroline had let him out but gotten away before he could feed on her; much better than still being trapped, but if he didn’t get some blood soon he was going to be easy pickings for Stefan when he came home.

A rancid scent filled his nose suddenly and he gazed up through a haze of starvation at what could only be some tattered, demonic hallucination, dancing around him like a mad thing. Was this part of the process of desiccation? Was he to be insane for however long Stefan decided to keep him packed away? He didn’t really think that would improve his attitude the way Stefan hoped.

“Birds! Birds!” the creature sang, spinning around dizzily. “Birds, come nest in the house! Stefan won’t like that, not at all. What a mess they’ll make!”

This was punctuated by a hideous laugh, high-pitched and off-balance, and Damon decided he would rather be completely senseless than listen to it again. Then suddenly something fluttered past his face and settled on his shoulder, warm and pulsing with life. One of those stupid crows, he realized, prying his eyes open. They really hadn’t done all that much good for him—until now. He snatched the bird from his shoulder with one last burst of speed and sank his teeth into it, relishing the blood he was able to draw. It wasn’t much, but it would keep him going until he could find something bigger and better.

 

Stefan was unsettled by Elena’s disappearance from the carwash, and Bonnie’s apparent fire-starting abilities—though he supposed it only figured that there were witches still in Mystic Falls. His plan was to check on the increasingly unhinged occupants of the boarding house first, then run over to Elena’s to check on her—she probably wouldn’t be surprised to see him.

And then he saw that the front door of the boarding house was open.

And there was a dead crow on the floor in the middle of the foyer, every bit of blood sucked from it.

Stefan zipped down to the basement, nearly tripping over Zach’s body before the open cell door. Immediately he dropped to the ground, feeling for a heartbeat, slicing his own wrist and pressing it against Zach’s lips in an attempt to revive him even as he knew it was futile. Finally Stefan slumped over the body, realizing how badly he’d failed. He’d held Zach when he was just a baby, watched him grow up, watched him take stewardship of the house and dive into the role of boarding house proprietor with enthusiasm. He was family. And Damon had killed him without a second thought, not even for food but just out of anger, revenge. There was nothing human left within his brother, nothing that remembered what it was like to be human himself, to feel warmth or compassion or fear of the unknown, the dark. There was only the monster, the animal concerned with its own survival, its own pleasure.

And it was left to Stefan to stop him. Permanently this time, taking no chances, showing no compassion himself.

Stefan set Zach’s body aside, wishing he could give him a proper burial, but that would raise too many questions that were difficult to answer. He would deal with that when he came back—Damon couldn’t have gotten far and he would still be weak; Stefan could finish him off—Kill him, his own brother, who wouldn’t be this monster if it weren’t for him. Somehow that made it both easier and harder for Stefan to see what he needed to do.

He hurried back upstairs, grabbing a wooden stake and steeling himself, trying to think clearly. There was some blood in the fridge and he went to it first, to make sure he had enough energy for the task ahead.

He found Isannah there, diligently scrubbing out the stove and humming cheerfully to herself. “Damon’s gone,” he informed her, rattling through the items in the fridge to reach the blood.

“Oh, is he?” she replied with exquisite disinterest.

Stefan snapped the top off a plastic bottle of blood and began to gulp it, giving Isannah a cold look. “He killed Zach.”

“Oh, did he?”

“Isannah!” he snapped, resisting the urge to grab her and shake her. She pulled back from the stove to blink at him innocently. “How did he get free?”

“I don’t know,” she answered pertly. “It’s none of my business.”

“G-------t, Isannah!” Giving in to his temper Stefan threw the bottle against the wall, splattering blood everywhere. “He murdered Zach! In this house! You’re supposed to protect the people in the house—“ He reached for her arm, not sure exactly what he was thinking, maybe that he was going to drag her to the basement and show her Zach’s body—but then he found himself slammed down on the kitchen table. If he’d had breath it would have been knocked out of him.

“You forbid me to interfere,” Isannah reminded him, and he would’ve called it a snarl if that didn’t seem so completely at odds with everything he knew about her. “You tortured my master— _in this house!_ —and you forbid me to interfere.” The light cast a strange shadow on the wall that seemed to belong to a larger and more terrifying creature.

Stefan swallowed hard. “There’s a—there’s a dead bird in the hallway,” he tried.

Isannah straightened up, almost seeming to shrink back to her normal self. “Oh, really?” she responded with interest. “I’ll go clean it up right away.” She trotted off to do her duty and Stefan stood tentatively from the table, picking up the stake he’d dropped. Clearly, he’d forgotten an important rule—don’t f—k with a house elf.

 

*****

 

Damon stomped into the house, decidedly _not_ in a good mood. All was _not_ going according to plan, and the failures made him feel amateurish and helpless, frankly. It was supposed to be simple, straightforward, but at every turn it seemed that the humans, Stefan, and even the universe conspired against him.

“Isannah!” he shouted. “Bring me a bottle of Scotch, don’t bother with the glass.” He threw himself down on a couch in the living room, unmindful of its groan of protest, and continued wallowing in self-pity for another thirty seconds or so. When no bottle of Scotch appeared before him, though, he repeated in annoyance, “Isannah!”

Still no response. Grumbling about how he couldn’t even catch a break in his own home, Damon jerked back up off the couch and headed down the hall towards the kitchen. “Isannah! Wait ‘til you hear what Bonnie said to me today. These witches have no respect. And when you consider what I did for their family—“ He paused suddenly, staring down at a white sock on the floor, one of Stefan’s. It was freshly laundered, meaning it had most recently been in Isannah’s possession. But Isannah would never have left it on the floor.

A nameless fear shot through him and he sped to the kitchen, taking in the broken dishes and overturned furniture without really seeing it. His eye was drawn to the small, blond bundle on the floor, arms stretched towards the safety of the hearth, motionless. In a pool of blood. If his heart still beat it would have stopped in that instant.

Damon dropped to her side, heedless of the sticky blood seeping through his jeans. “Sunny?” He felt for a pulse, mind blanking on whether she was supposed to have one or not. She had never been injured before in his memory.

The back door opened and Stefan walked in. “Isannah, why is the gate—“ He froze at the scene before him, but his appearance had jumpstarted Damon’s memory.

“Cotton!” he snapped, pressing the clean sock he still clutched against a wound on her neck. He yanked his leather jacket off and threw it aside as useless, then jerked his cotton t-shirt off over his head and wrapped it firmly around her midsection. “ _Cotton!_ ” he prompted Stefan again, scrambling over Isannah to the basket of laundry that lay tipped and scattered across the floor.

Finally Stefan reacted, yanking a drawer out—all the way out, wood splintering—and emptied it of cotton dishcloths, rushing to bind up Isannah’s wounds with them. Damon flung shirts and socks from the laundry at him to layer over her as he searched for what he really wanted, a clean bedsheet.

“We need straw, and a box,” he instructed urgently, starting to wrap her in the sheet.

“Where am I—“

“I don’t know, just find it!” Damon ordered sharply, and Stefan nodded and zipped out.

She looked so tiny once he’d bundled her tightly in the sheet, tiny and pale and still. She still breathed, barely, and only a little blood seeped through the layers they’d wrapped her in—he didn’t know if that meant she was already healing, or if she had no more blood left to lose.

Logically, he should let her rest. But instead he patted her cheek lightly, leaning close over her face. “Sunny? Sunny? Can you hear me? Open your eyes.” Of course, she didn’t.

Stefan burst back in, carrying the cardboard box the new stereo system had come in. “Grass clippings,” he sputtered, indicating what he’d stuffed into the box. “Do you think—“

“Hope so,” Damon decided, snatching it from him. He dumped half of the clippings onto the floor, then he and Stefan carefully maneuvered Isannah into the box, tucking her knees up under her chin to make her fit. Obviously this was not the model for human first aid. “Get more,” Damon demanded, scooping the extra grass clippings up and piling them on top of her. Stefan left and returned with armloads from the yard until the box was mounded over, then Damon carefully tucked another sheet over the top and folded the box shut, forcing the flaps to bend around each other. Only then did he drop to the floor, suddenly exhausted.

Stefan leaned against the box beside him, feeling the same way. “What happened?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Damon confessed, shaking his head. “I just came home—“ He broke off abruptly; there was nothing more to say.

“She’ll be okay,” Stefan promised, daring to place his hand on Damon’s arm. Then he couldn’t help adding a halting, “Don’t you think?”

Damon shook him off and stood. “We have to clean the kitchen,” he announced. “For her to get better.”

 

Stefan thought the kitchen had never been so clean as when Damon was scouring it to avoid thinking about the box they’d placed in front of the lit fireplace. Currently he was on his stomach, scraping grit from between the flagstones with a pocket knife, while Stefan tried to glue the broken chair back together.

“The back gate was open, to the alley,” he began thoughtfully, pushing the chair rung back into the hole carved in the leg. Glue seeped out but he held it steady, waiting for it to set. “Did you see anything?”

“No,” Damon replied shortly. Conversation, such as it was, was briefly interrupted as he removed the loosened grime with the vacuum, then dabbed the smallest particles up with a damp cloth. It was funny, almost; Stefan bet Damon had never done so much cleaning before in his entire life, total.

“What could attack a house elf in her own home?” Stefan wondered aloud, releasing the chair from his grasp.

“It wobbles,” Damon criticized as Stefan tipped the chair back and forth.

“It wobbled before,” Stefan reminded him.

Damon shot him a death-glare. “Make it _not_ wobble.”

Stefan sighed and examined the legs again. “A boggart?” he guessed persistently.

“Not powerful enough,” Damon judged, scooting forward to the next flagstone seam to begin scraping again.

“A troll?”

Damon cast him a disdainful glance. “We would’ve noticed a _troll_ in the area.”

Stefan pried one of the protective pads off the end of a chair leg; now it wobbled considerably less. He hoped Damon would find it acceptable, because he had other things to work on, like the drawer he’d ripped apart. He wasn’t sure he had enough glue to save it.

“What about a goblin?” Damon suggested suddenly.

Stefan glanced back down at him, surprised he was even thinking about it. “Would a goblin be powerful enough?”

“ _Some_ goblins,” Damon mused. “It could’ve had an assist from—whoever planned this.”

“Not the shortest list of suspects,” Stefan pointed out, giving up on the drawer. He tossed the wood scraps into the fire. “Obviously someone well-versed in magic, if they recruited and controlled a goblin.”

“Well there’s always witches,” Damon said, in a deadly flat tone.

“Sheila wouldn’t have done it,” Stefan informed him, as though this should be obvious. “Anyway, _why_ would someone want to attack Isannah? Was there something in the house they wanted, that Isannah wouldn’t let them have?” Which didn’t really make sense; just wait until she’d left the grounds—like on a shopping trip— _then_ break in.

“Revenge,” Damon suggested darkly from the floor. Stefan walked around the box to look at him. “That’s what I would do. Find something your enemy cares about, and rip it to pieces.” He stabbed viciously at a track of dirt.

Stefan gave him a worried look but couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be brushed off. “I think I’ll call Elena,” he decided instead. “Do you mind if she comes over?”

Damon merely grunted in response. “Don’t make a mess,” he warned.

 

The process of house elf medicine was maddeningly vague to Elena. “How can she breathe in there?” she wanted to know.

“Um, I don’t think it’s a problem,” was the best answer Stefan could come up with—not because he was hiding anything, but because he simply didn’t know.

“What about food and water?”

“She doesn’t seem to need it right now.”

This was not satisfying to Elena. “How do you know if she’s getting better?”

“Oh, I think she’ll start moving around in the box,” Stefan responded. He’d felt pretty clear on this point; but once he actually said it out loud, he realized how ridiculous it sounded.

“How do you know if she’s getting worse?” Elena questioned softly.

“By the smell,” Damon claimed crudely, interrupting them in the living room. “You left a mess in the kitchen,” he accused Stefan.

“I cleaned,” his brother insisted, not glancing at the plate Elena had eaten her sandwich from. She was the only one who needed to eat the food kept in the kitchen.

“There were _crumbs_ ,” Damon sneered. “Too late, I already cleaned it,” he added, when Stefan started to rise. “Gimme that plate.” Stefan handed it over helplessly and watched Damon walk away.

“He’s been very concerned,” Stefan confided to Elena once Damon had gone. “He sleeps in the kitchen next to the box and hardly ever leaves it.”

“How long have you two known Isannah?” Elena asked him.

“Since we were human,” Stefan told her quietly. “Our mother died when I was eight and Damon was thirteen. Our father couldn’t take care of us, so he sent us to live with a great-uncle. Isannah was his housekeeper.” Elena’s eyebrows went up—apparently the Salvatores had been connected to the supernatural longer than she’d thought. “I guess he was interested in magic, and he… found her somewhere. After a few years we went back to live with our father, but when our great-uncle died, he left Isannah to both of us in his will.”

“Like a… slave?” Elena asked tentatively.

Stefan shrugged slightly. “I guess that’s how it’s done,” he admitted. “There’s all these magical rules, and…” He really hadn’t explored it much, honestly. “She came to live with us—I don’t think our father really understood what she was, or he wouldn’t have let her stay. Then…” Elena nodded to show she knew what he meant—then Katherine came, and they died, and everything changed. “It works out pretty well, actually, for her to travel with us and take care of wherever we’re staying. Well, mostly me. Damon isn’t usually that domestic.” Yet Damon was the one who seemed especially distressed by her injuries.

Elena wrapped her arm around his and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Will she get better?” she asked softly.

He put his hand over hers. “I don’t know,” he was forced to confess.

 

Damon rolled over in bed and hit something hard and cold. Oh right, he wasn’t _in_ bed, he was on a pile of blankets on the kitchen floor. He gazed at the cardboard box beside him, searching for any sign of movement, but there was none. Then he gave the box a little shake himself and waited to see if there was an answering reaction. There wasn’t.

Sighing, he clambered to his feet and added some more logs to the smoldering hearth fire. Elena seemed to find it uncomfortably warm in the kitchen now, but Damon didn’t really care. It was important to keep Isannah warm so she could heal. Then he laid back down on his blankets and tried to go back to sleep, though the rising sun meant it wouldn’t be long before Stefan came down to get his coffee.

Suddenly, there was a slight noise from the box. Damon froze, thinking it might be his imagination, or a noise from somewhere else in the house. Then the box rattled again, more forcefully, and he sat up quickly, staring at the box with a mixture of shock and wariness. Hope could not be allowed to enter, not yet.

The folded flaps of the box began to bend upwards, pushed from inside, and finally they popped apart, allowing Isannah to emerge—covered in cotton fluff and grass clippings, but alive, and apparently healthy. She saw Damon sitting on the floor surrounded by blankets and smiled down at him as she realized he’d been waiting there for her, for who knew how long. Moving a bit stiffly she reached out to touch his cheek, her skin warm from being enclosed in the box, and almost against his will Damon found himself smiling back.

Stefan stopped short in the doorway when he saw them, mouth opening to express joy at Isannah being better. But he paused when he saw the expressions on both faces—at that moment, there was no one else in the world for Damon and Isannah but each other. It was not the mere affection of friends that Stefan saw passing between them, or even the love of those who considered themselves family; it was the kind of love Stefan felt for Elena and he would recognize it anywhere, even in as strange a place as Damon’s face.

He just wondered if either of _them_ realized it.


	3. Chapter 3

The noise was surprisingly loud—glass shattering, timbers snapping, parts of the ceiling crashing into the floor. Elena liked to think of herself as calm under pressure, but she was dangerously close to blind panic as she darted through the halls close on Isannah’s heels, dodging obstacles with instincts she didn’t even know she had and didn’t trust. They made it to the kitchen, the place where Isannah felt the safest, and huddled—ironically—in the huge stone hearth amid the cold ashes. The questions on Elena’s lips seemed at once hopelessly obvious and desperately important—how were they going to get out, what were they going to do, where could they go? All variations on the same theme, really, and bits and pieces of them tumbled out of her mouth, babbling and incoherent.

Isannah held her close, clinging to her protectively—she was as terrified as Elena as the flames crept closer, the structural features of the house giving way around them, but she at least had certain powers Elena didn’t.

“I’ll get us out,” she promised. “I’ll take us somewhere safe!”

And then—total silence, and cool air on her skin instead of the searing heat. Elena opened her eyes—and screamed when she saw Damon staring back at her in shock, his jaw bloody, an unconscious girl in his arms dripping blood onto a tiled floor. The unfortunate girl was dropped with a thump and Isannah broke away from Elena to run to Damon’s arms, heedless of the blood on his face and the floor.

He wrapped his arms around her automatically as she sobbed. “Isannah! What’s wrong? Why do you—smell like smoke?” His gaze was firmly fixed on Elena, who couldn’t tear her own gaze away from the body on the floor. Seeing this, Damon reached out, lightning-fast, and grabbed her arm, whisking both girls to another room. He also grabbed a random piece of fabric and wiped his face before repeating his questions. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

“The house!” Isannah told him miserably, weeping in his arms again. “It’s on fire! It’s burning down!”

“The family home? In Mystic Falls?” Damon confirmed urgently. She nodded. “Was Stefan inside it?”

At this Isannah shook her head. “No, he wasn’t there at all!”

“D—n,” Damon muttered in disappointment, before he went back to comforting her.

“You said you would bring us somewhere safe!” Elena couldn’t help but point out to the girl.

“You _are_ safe,” Damon told her coldly. Isannah was too distraught to respond.

“As safe as that girl in there?” Elena demanded, pointing back the way they had come.

“Hey, quit complaining and have a little compassion,” Damon snapped uncharacteristically. “She just lost a house! For a house elf that’s devastating. Shh, come on…”

“I failed,” Isannah murmured despondently. “I failed in my duty to protect the house.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Damon tried to assure her. “You can look after this place! You know how messy I am. And there’s no food here at all! You’ll have to go shopping.”

It was too soon for her to be cheered up yet, though. “What about Stefan?” she sniffled.

Damon made eye contact with Elena and momentarily seemed like his usual menacing self. “I expect Stefan will find his way here pretty quickly,” he decided. Elena shifted uncomfortably, suddenly aware that she didn’t really know where ‘here’ was. His attention went back to Isannah. “Look, why don’t you clean up in here,” he tempted her, “and I’ll just go take care of something for a minute”—aka, dispose of a body—“and then we’ll go shopping, okay? You can make Elena something to eat. Okay? Okay?”

“Okay,” Isannah repeated in a small, distant voice. Damon kissed her forehead with a tenderness that Elena had never seen in him before, then left the two of them in the room.

As soon as he was out the door, Elena ran to her friend. “Isannah! We have to get out of here! Take us someplace else!”

Isannah shook her head slowly and bent to pick up the blood-stained cloth Damon had wiped his face with, which turned out to be a t-shirt. “I can only go to my houses,” she replied, in a mechanical tone. They were in the bedroom, apparently, and she moved to make the bed.

Elena grabbed her arm, trying to get her attention. She seemed to be in shock. “Then take us back to the house at Mystic Falls,” she insisted. “Put us in the backyard, we’ll say we ran out of the house—“ Surely the whole town was there by now, the volunteer fire brigade desperately spraying down the flames while the local newscaster intoned solemnly before a camera.

“I travel directly to the kitchen,” Isannah countered, fluffing the bed pillows. Elena had to think for a second to realize they’d landed in the kitchen of what appeared to be Damon’s high-rise apartment… somewhere. “And there’s… no more kitchen.” Her face crumpled up and Elena couldn’t think about her own problems for long. She sat down on the bed and put her arm around the other girl.

“Shh, it’ll be okay,” she told her. “Stefan will find a _new_ house you can take care of—“

“I should’ve been able to stop the fire,” Isannah murmured instead. “Why couldn’t I stop it? Why couldn’t I protect my house?”

Substitute ‘parents’ and ‘accident’ for ‘house’ and ‘fire,’ and Elena realized she knew exactly how the other woman felt. And she also realized there was nothing she could say that would make her feel better.

 

Shopping with Damon and Isannah was a strange experience. And not just because they were in some eastern European country where absolutely nothing was in English. Damon ignored her almost completely, except to make her the target of tasteless wisecracks, which was irritating to say the least. Then Elena saw the corner of Isannah’s mouth quirk up the tiniest bit at one of his remarks—not one about Elena, though—and the human girl suddenly realized that she wasn’t there at all. Damon was totally focused on making Isannah feel better, and that revelation was enough to keep Elena quiet for a good ten minutes.

There was a little market not far from Damon’s building, and the language barrier didn’t seem to be a problem for him _or_ Isannah as she deftly squeezed fruit, sniffed cheese, and read the ingredient labels on cleaning products. Elena trailed along behind them, watching Isannah’s face for any glimmer of emotion and watching Damon do the same.

“Do you want some oranges?” Isannah asked flatly, and it took Elena a moment to realize the question was nominally addressed to her. “I could make you some fresh orange juice.” Without waiting for an answer she began picking through the fruit on display.

“Now _these_ kind of remind me of Caroline,” Damon remarked, hefting a pair of oranges lewdly. Elena rolled her eyes. “These,” he went on thoughtfully, going for a smaller pair, “are Vicki, I think. And as for Elena—“ He gave her chest a studious glance and she crossed her arms over it defensively. “Anyone see the grapes around here?” he asked innocently, and Elena couldn’t help but huff in indignation. “Okay, okay, maybe kiwis,” he allowed with a rude smirk. Isannah tsked him and his attention snapped back to her. Elena’s retort died in her throat, knowing suddenly that it would fall on deaf ears.

On the way home Damon carried one bag of groceries while Elena toted two and Isannah the rest, easily. Damon had tried to take more but for some reason the attempt irritated Isannah and he stopped immediately—she didn’t like anyone to do the chores she considered her own. The neighborhood was a little shady, with hard-eyed men gazing speculatively at them on the street as the three of them passed by, their cigarettes briefly lighting the shadows they lurked in. But Elena felt perfectly safe with Damon beside her, which was an extremely strange sensation. Ironically she grew more uneasy once they returned to his apartment.

“I’m sure Elena’s starving,” Damon announced, abandoning his groceries on the hall table. “And this place is a mess! Can you do anything about that?”

“Dinner will be ready in half an hour,” Isannah replied briskly.

“Good. We won’t bother you.” Damon put his hand on Elena’s shoulder to stop her from following Isannah into the kitchen. His look—the first real one he’d given her in a long time—said not to bother protesting. Her heart began to pound. “Come on.”

He seemed to lead her along forever, though the living room, the master bedroom, and finally the master bathroom at the other end of the apartment. “The light’s better in here,” he said, flipping on the switch. She was momentarily blinded by the glow. “Aren’t you the brave little girl,” he mocked in his usual tone. “You didn’t make a peep.”

“About—“ Elena started to ask in confusion, then he touched her hand and she looked down sharply to see an ugly red burn on the back of it. She gasped, suddenly starting to feel the pain she hadn’t noticed before.

Damon smirked as he opened up a tube of burn cream, as if laughing at her inability to notice her own injuries. He insisted on tending the wound, even when Elena tried to pull her hand away from him. “How did the fire start?” he asked in a low voice, his tone a little too casual.

“I don’t know,” Elena admitted. His touch was cool and oddly soothing. “We were in the kitchen, and she suddenly ran out. And we saw that the living room was—on fire.” Standing here, it was difficult to believe it had all really happened.

“Describe it.”

She swallowed, not wanting to think back. “The curtains were on fire,” she remembered softly, “and the furniture… even the floor. Part of the ceiling collapsed while we were standing there. And then the whole house… It was so fast.”

Not that she really expected to see sympathy in Damon’s eyes when she looked up—but she’d thought he would at least look like he was paying attention to her, since he’d asked. But his expression was distant, as if he were thinking of something else. “What color was the fire?” he asked her.

Elena frowned and took her hand away from his, the wound care complete. “Fire-colored. What do you mean?”

He narrowed his eyes at her in irritation, and she suddenly found the distant look preferable. “I _mean_ , this was no ordinary, everyday, Smokey the Bear fire where someone tossed a cigarette butt on some old newspapers,” he told her impatiently. “A fire like that, Isannah would catch immediately.” He glanced out the doorway to make sure she was nowhere around. “She protects the house, she can tell when there’s something wrong with it. But she didn’t catch this. So it wasn’t natural. So I’m asking you if there were any unusual colors or scents that could help explain it.” By the time he was done, the words were being ground out through gritted teeth and Elena had backed up half a foot.

“No,” she replied. “I didn’t notice anything. I’m sorry.”

Damon straightened up suddenly, shaking off the tension he had built up. He sniffed the air exaggeratedly. “Hmm, smells like a pretty good meal, for human food.”

“I’m not really hungry,” she admitted. Which was apparently the wrong thing to say, because in an instant he was in her face again, his gaze as intense as if he were trying to pull a mind trick on her.

“You will eat what she serves you,” he ordered. “Every bite. And ask for seconds.” He pulled back then and started to walk out of the bathroom. “Throw it up later if you have to,” he tossed over his shoulder, somehow both flippant and serious at the same time.

A thought suddenly occurred to her. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he turned back to her quizzically. “It was _your_ home, too.”

“Let’s not get sentimental,” he snorted dismissively, turning his back on her. “I didn’t spend much time there.”


End file.
